If you are like the rest of us, of course, you do. Well, there in that pile of papers on your desk and in those file cabinets under that dust is a lot of money that people owe you. If you could find those pieces of paper and collect some of that money from people who may have forgotten that they owe you, things would be great, right! Well, there is a solution to this problem. You could spend days and days cleaning up your old paperwork and chasing down people on the telephone and on the street. Sounds like fun doesn't it. And then you could do it again next time. And it will be just as much fun then, won't it. You've got so much to do that you'll never get caught up, so where is all that money going to go? It's going to stay in someone else's pocket, right.

Now, you should think about a real long-term solution to this problem. Automate your office and your accounting system and all of those pieces of paper telling you about people who owe you money will be unnecessary. There on your clean desk will be a computer keeping track of your workers, your jobs, your customers, your vendors, your money, your business friends, and your anniversary! The investment to do this is just not that great anymore. You will need several thousand dollars for an office computer and some software so you can cleanup your office once and keep track of what is happening to your business and your money.

Then when you need to know who owes you money, you just go on to your Windows desktop and click on the shortcut to QuickBooks. When your company records open, go to Reports, A/R Reports, and Collection Report. Print up that list and in seconds you'll know who has your money. If you then go in your customer contact software GoldMine, you can link an alarm to those customer records that will remind you to make a friendly call to those folks reminding them they owe you money. Pretty soon you'll be able to afford to go on vacation instead of digging through those piles of paper.